His native land withered by famine, his countrymen dying by the hundreds of thousands, John Brady fled Ireland in the mid-19th century and found work as a laborer in Boston. Soon, he married Bridget Bailey, herself a refugee of Ireland’s Great Famine, and at age 22 they began raising a family.
Little did John and Bridget Brady know, as they coped with the hardships of their new lives in a new land, that their marriage one day would help make possible the birth of one of New England’s most revered sports figures. They were the great-great-grandparents of Patriots legend Tom Brady, according to new research into the five-time Super Bowl champion’s roots.